No Word of the Year for 2013

One of my wonderful insightful readers, Linda, helped me put my finger on part of why it no longer resonates and my mastermind partner, Stacey, helped me find another approach that will work for me.

In the past my words for the year would bounce between doing words and being words. Invariably the doing words did nothing for me but the being words were huge.

When I started the word of the year thing, I didn’t have a clear idea of where I wanted to go. So having words like courage and integrity to guide me were a huge help in defining my path. It left me open to discovering along the way exactly what I needed.

Now that I have clarity on where I am going, I’m ready to go there. I want a more directed approach. I want a doing word but doing words are just concrete goals without much clarity.

I’m running a business – I need much more clarity than a word of a year can provide.

So I’m tossing the pretense that picking a single word can capture the concrete goals that I want to focus on for 2013. Time for clearer language.

Focus of the Year

So instead of a word of the year, I am picking an area that I want to focus on.

Last year I put the lion’s share of my effort into getting my teaching career running smoothly and that is exactly what happened.

This year I’m picking Making Art as my focus for the year. The last several years my goals for studio time have fallen far short of what I would like – so this year I am making art a priority.

I haven’t had a year where I created a large body of new BIG art in a long time and 2013 is going to be another one of those amazing years in my studio.

What About Being?

Being – and intentions – these are very important to me so this is only part 1 of what is going to replace my word of the year.

So in my next post I’ll share what I’m going to do to focus on being who I want to be in 2013.

Much gratitude to Linda and Stacy for helping me sort out that it is a-okay to focus on a concrete goal for a year!

Word of the Year has never really resonated with me until THIS year. I picked it back in December: “Simplify.” Everything in my world was pointing me to this word. And, boy, everyone in my life knows that it’s my word of the year. (My blog post tomorrow is about my word.)

The word of the year has never seemed right to me, nor do I make resolutions. But I am feeling a very strong desire to create, to make art, as you say. And I have also been simplifying. My mantra is: if it doesn’t make me smile, it goes.

I can’t image a “word of the year.” It seems like there is so much to do I can’t imagine. I can see where the focus area might be helpful as a way to return to center. I just thoroughly enjoy floating from one thing to the next and back. Of course, that does make it hard to describe my (or should I say our) art. Both my wife and I do and try so many things with our art, it makes it difficult to define.

While I don’t want to pin down my year to a single word, I do try to keep my artwork pretty tightly focused. I find working in a series (I’ve been working in the same series for 13 years now) allows me to go deep into my themes.

Plus it’s a lot easier to market it if you can describe it :):)

But many artists work as you do – floating around from thing to thing.